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Lecture Notes
Chapter 12: Acculturation, Culture Shock, & Intercultural Competence
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Identify and discuss the factors that facilitate or hinder acculturation
2. Recognize and discuss the causes of culture shock
3. Identify the five personality dimensions linked to success in long-term intercultural encounters
4. Identify and discuss the four components of intercultural communication competence
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
This chapter focuses on thee important features associated with intercultural communication as they
relate to traveling abroad to foreign cultures. These features include intercultural acculturation, culture
shock, and intercultural communication competence. Acculturation refers to a process wherein you
adapt to a new culture by adopting its values, attitudes, and practices. Culture shock refers to a
multifaceted experience resulting from the stress associated with entering a new culture. Intercultural
communication competence is defined as the degree to which you effectively adapt your verbal and
nonverbal messages to the appropriate cultural context. When you communicate with someone from a
different culture, you will have to adjust and modify the kinds of verbal and nonverbal messages you
send. This process requires that you have some knowledge about the person with whom you are
communicating, that you are motivated to communicate with him or her, and that you have the
appropriate verbal and nonverbal skills in order to encode and decode messages. Each of these variables
affects the success rate of your intercultural communication experiences. When individuals or groups of
individuals enter a new culture, they are faced with a different set of values, different behavioral
patterns, and a different verbal and nonverbal communication system. In most (perhaps all) cases, such
people are affected by their new cultural surroundings.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Acculturation.
1. Acculturation is a process of cultural change that results from ongoing contact between two or
more culturally different groups. Acculturation is often marked by physical and psychological
changes that occur as a result of the adaptation required to function in a new and different
cultural context. People adapting to new cultures face changes in their diet, climate, housing,
communication, role prescriptions, media consumption, and the myriad rules, norms and values
of a new and (relatively) dissimilar culture. The stress associated with such changes (i.e.,
acculturative stress) is marked by a reduction in a person’s physical and mental health.
2. The degree of acculturative stress experienced by people adapting to new cultures varies
according to the similarities and dissimilarities between the host culture and native culture of
the immigrants. Characteristics such as the amount of exposure one has had to the new culture,
the individual’s level of education, sex, age, language, race, income, as well as the person’s
psychological and spiritual strength, all affect acculturative stress.
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3. The ability to speak the language of the host culture will certainly facilitate one’s ability to adapt
and function. Moreover, the host culture’s political and social attitudes toward immigrants will
have a major impact on one’s ability to adjust to new cultural surroundings. Certain racial
groups are more or less welcome in some cultures than others.
4. In order for acculturation to occur, there needs to be contact between the members of the host
culture and the newcomers. Such contact needs to be continuous and direct. Acculturation
effects may vary according to whether the purpose of contact is colonization, enslavement,
trade, military control, evangelization, or education. The length of contact is also a factor. Other
factors to take into consideration include the social or political polices of the mainstream culture
as they relate to the immigrant group (i.e., political representation, citizenship criteria, language
requirements, employment opportunities etc.).
II. A Model of Acculturation
1. Young Kim’s model of cultural adaptation takes into account both individual and cultural factors
that affect acculturation. Kim argues that acculturation is not a linear one-way process; rather,
there is an interaction between the stranger and the host culture. Kim argues that the role of
communication, the role of the host environment, and the role of predisposition best explain the
acculturation process
a. In terms of the role of communication, personal communication refers to the
individual’s host communication competence—that is, the degree to which the
newcomer can encode and decode verbal and nonverbal messages within the host
environment. Social communication refers to the actual interaction between the
newcomer and host persons.
b. The environment includes the degree to which the host culture is receptive to
strangers, the extent to which natives within the host culture exert pressure on
newcomers to conform to their culture’s values, beliefs, and practices, and ethnic group
strength.
c. Predispostion factors include how much people know about their new culture, their
ability to speak the language, the probability of employment, and their understanding of
the cultural institutions, and the inherited characteristic that newcomers have as
members of distinct ethnic groups.
III. Modes of Acculturation
1. Berry has identified four modes of acculturation, including assimilation, integration, separation,
and marginalization. An individual’s level of acculturation depends, in part, on two independent
processes. These processes include the degree to which the person approaches or avoids
interaction with the host culture (i.e., outgroup contact and relations), and the degree to which
the individual maintains or relinquishes his/her native culture’s attributes (i.e., ingroup identity
and maintenance).
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a. To the extent that the individual desires contact with the host culture (and the various
microcultures) while not necessarily maintaining an identity with his/her native culture,
assimilation occurs.
b. Some people desire a high level of interaction with the host culture while maintaining
their identity with their native culture. This is called integration.
c. When individuals prefer low levels of interaction with the host culture and associative
micro-cultural groups while desiring a close connection with and reaffirmation of their
native culture, the mode of acculturation is called separation.
d. The fourth type of acculturation is marginalization. This occurs when the individual
chooses not to identify with his/her native culture nor with the host culture.
e. Another possible acculturation mode is cultural transmutation. In this mode, the
individual chooses to identify with a third cultural group (e.g., microculture) which
materializes out of the native and host cultural groups.
IV. Acculturation in the United States
1. The two largest ethnic populations in the United States are Hispanics and Blacks. For these
groups, acculturation refers to the degree to which they participate in the cultural traditions,
values, beliefs and norms of the dominant White society, or remain immersed in their own
unique cultural customs and conventions, or participate in both.
2. Social scientists are beginning to understand that the degree of acculturation for micro-cultural
groups within the US is associated with a variety of social and medical health-related problems,
including alcoholism, cigarette smoking, drug-abuse and HIV/AIDS related knowledge, attitudes,
and risk-related behaviors. Moreover, micro-cultural group acculturation is associated with
methods of conflict resolution (e.g., belligerent behaviors), willingness to use counseling, career
development and work habits, and educational achievement (i.e., increase absences, lower
grades).
3. In an effort to better understand the maladaptive attitudes and behaviors among the various
micro-cultural groups in the US, researchers have devoted considerable efforts toward assessing
levels of acculturation. Scales have been developed that measure Hispanic and African-
American acculturation in the US.
V. Culture Shock
1. When people move to a new culture they take with them the values, beliefs, customs and
behaviors of their old culture. Often times, depending on the degree of similarity between the
old and the new culture, the values, beliefs, customs and behaviors of the native culture clash
with those of the new culture. This can result in disorientation, misunderstandings, conflict,
stress, and anxiety. Researchers call this phenomena culture shock.
2. Culture shock appears to be a psychological and social process that progresses in stages, usually
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lasting as long as a year. Most models of culture shock include four stages. Most models of
culture shock describe the process curvilinearly. Culture shock begins with feelings of optimism
and even elation that eventually give way to frustration, tension, and anxiety as individuals are
unable to effectively interact with their new environment. As they develop strategies for
resolving conflict people begin to restore their confidence and eventually recover and reach
some level of acculturation.
a. The initial stage of culture shock, usually called something like the tourist or
honeymoon stage, is characterized by intense excitement and euphoria associated with
being somewhere different and unusual.
b. Eventually, the fun and excitement associated with the tourist phase gives way to
frustration and real stress. Failure events once considered minor and funny are now
perceived as stressful. The new environment requires a great deal of conscious energy
that was not required of the old environment, which leads to cognitive overload and
fatigue.
c. The third phase of culture shock is typically called the adjustment or reorientation
phase. Here people eventually realize that the problems associated with the host
culture are due not because of deliberate attempts by the natives, but by a real
difference in values, beliefs, and behaviors.
d. The final stage of culture shock is labeled the adaptation or acculturation stage. At this
point, individuals actively engaged the culture with their new problem-solving and
conflict resolution tools with some degree of success.
VI. The “W” Curve Models of Culture Shock
1. Furham and Bochner’s “W Curve” model of culture shock includes two “U Curves” including the
initial culture shock experienced when the traveler enters a new culture, and a re-entry shock
“U Curve.” In other words, when people return home after an extended stay in a foreign
culture, they experience another round of culture shock, but this time, in their native culture.
VII. Assessing Culture Shock
2. Successful management of culture shock depends on an awareness of its symptoms and the
degree of its severity. Kim Zapf has developed a questionnaire called the Culture Shock Profile
which is designed to assess the intensity of culture shock you are experiencing.
VIII. Indicators of Success in the Intercultural Context
1. Scholars have identified five personality dimensions directly linked to success in long-term
intercultural encounters. They argue that these five dimensions increase an individual’s
professional performance, personal adjustment, and social integration during acculturation
across a variety of settings, including employee effectiveness on the job, successful immigration,
relational satisfaction among expatriates and their families, and the academic performance of
students studying abroad. These five dimensions are cultural empathy, open-mindedness, social
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initiative, emotional stability, and flexibility.
a. Empathy refers to an individual’s sincere attempt to identify with, understand, and
sympathize with the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of the individuals from the new
culture with whom he or she is living and interacting. Open-mindedness refers to the
individual’s motivation and ability to delay or defer judgment when confronted with the
different behaviors or values of a new culture. Social initiative refers to the individual’s
tendency to approach social situations. Emotional stability refers to the individual’s
ability to remain composed when faced with novel and stressful conditions. Flexibility
refers to your ability to transition from or replace those thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors that have become almost second nature to you, in favor of new strategies to
deal with everyday situations.
IX. Intercultural Communication Competence
1. Interculturally competent people successfully and effectively adapt their verbal and nonverbal
messages to the appropriate cultural context. For the most part, competence is something that
is perceived about another person rather than something another person inherently possesses.
In other words, an individual may appear competent to one person and not to another.
Moreover, intercultural competence varies from situation to situation.
2. Verbal and nonverbal appropriateness and effectiveness are two important qualities of
intercultural competence. Appropriate behaviors conform to the rules, norms, and expectancies
of the cultural context. Effective behaviors are those that successfully accomplish
communicative goals (e.g., uncertainty reduction).
X. A Model of Intercultural Competence
1. There are three necessary and interdependent ingredients of communication competence:
knowledge, motivation, and behavior. The model of intercultural competence presented in this
book includes these three dimensions along with a fourth component of a set of situational
features.
2. The knowledge component consists of how much a person knows about the culture of the
person with whom one is interacting. This includes, minimally, some comprehension of the
other’s dominant cultural values and beliefs. Verbal and nonverbal scripts, cognitive simplicity–
rigidity, ethnocentrism, are also a part of the knowledge component.
a. Verbal and nonverbal scripts are like blueprints for communication that provide people
with expectations about future communicative encounters with others, including
greetings, farewells, etc.
b. Cognitive simplicity and rigidity refers to the degree to which individuals process
information about persons from different cultures in a simplistic and rigid manner.
c. Ethnocentrism is the extent to which one perceives one’s own group as the center of
everything, and judges other groups with reference to it.
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3. The affective component refers to the degree to which a person approaches or avoids
intercultural communication; that is, one’s motivation to interact with others from different
cultures. A central feature here is intercultural communication apprehension (ICA) and
intercultural willingness to communicate.
a. One’s ability to cope with stress also leads to approach-avoidance tendencies. Due to
the potential inordinate uncertainty during intercultural communication, anxiety levels
may be high as well, leading to increased stress.
4. The psycho-motor component refers to the actual enactment of the knowledge and affective
components. Elements of the psycho-motor component include verbal and nonverbal
performance, and role enactment.
a. Verbal performance refers to how people use language. The individual needs to pay
close attention to the nuances of the kinesic, paralinguistic, haptic, olfactic, and
proxemic codes of the other culture.
b. Role enactment refers to how well a person executes the appropriate verbal and
nonverbal messages according to his/her relative position and role in the host culture.
5. The fourth component of intercultural competence is the actual situation in which intercultural
communication occurs. Some of the situational features that may affect competence include,
but are not limited to, the environmental context, previous contact, status differential, and third
party interventions.